VIA Programs
Graphics localization
Altogether, we localized 20 graphics for VIA Programs into 3 locales–zh-CN, zh-TW and ja-JA. These graphics include infographics in program introduction pages and marketing graphics.
Our client created their graphics using Adobe Illustrator, and we received the original .ai files. However, we didn’t receive packaged files, but individual files instead, as shown in the picture on the right. This resulted in many missing links and fonts.
While we were waiting for our client to get back to us with all the missing links, we came up with an alternative solution. Because that the graphics are all created for web publishing purposes, these graphics don’t need to be in high-quality. So the alternative solution was that we use Photoshop to recreate the text-boxes. We did eventually get the missing links from our clients, so I localized the graphics using Illustrator. Also, since there were too many graphics to deal with, and the only way to localize them with Illustrator was through manually copying and pasting all the texts and create picture-lists, I thought of recreating all the graphics in Indesign since many CAT tools support .indd files. But this resulted in many misplaced texts and images, and the CAT tool we were using, SmartCAT, didn’t support INDD files (but will be in the future as indicated on their website). So creating picture-list was the only solution with regard to graphics localization.
Website Localization
All together we localized 12 web pages into 4 locales–zh-CN, zh-TW, ja-JA and th-TH.
Our client built their website using WordPress. This left us with two choices in terms of the tools that we choose to make their website multilingual: WPML and q-TranslateX, two WordPress plugins that enables website localization. A major difference is that WPML creates separate posts for each language, while q-TranslateX gathers contents for different languages in one post. We communicated with our client about the choice of tools, and their goal was to make the web pages multilingual but at the same time, the viewers would be able to quickly go back and forth between English and their native language for references. Q-TranslateX became a better choice, and taking into account that it’s free and both our client and ourselves have experience with the plugin, we were both happy about the choice.
The client trusted us enough to let us modify the original website. This was both a blessing and a challenge–although it’s efficient and straightforward to work on the original website, it was also terrifying because using q-translateX meant that I had to manually copy everything from the website. While I was doing that, I was afraid I might accidentally delete texts from the original website. My solution towards this challenge was that I kept screenshots of the original websites and documented every change I made on the website. Also, I mock-built every page for every language to make sure the page would be successfully localized into the dedicated language.
The other challenge I had localizing their website was the website templates. The templates can not be localized using q-TranslateX, as shown in the picture below. I downloaded a plugin called “Export Plugins and Templates” in WordPress and exported the templates. Using global search in TextWrangler, I was able to locate the template that was used to create the pages that need localization. The template was created using PHP, so the next step would be for me to internationalize the PHP file and import the PHP file back to the website. Before implementing the practice I consulted with our client, but they were concerned about the internationalized templates tampering with the original design, and they thought the idea of leaving some words in English was acceptable. So further discussion is needed on this practice and we are planning on having another meeting with our client hopefully before we graduate.